Very informative lecture. Brilliant analysis and strong arguments from an expert who masters his topic cleverly. Nothing can beat informed rationality.
It is just incredibly entertaining to hear a scholarly assessment of the bible. It explains so much and to put it into the context of a literary and kind of historical document pulls it all together. Students who get to take Joel Baden's are lucky.
I find the Old Testament as a historic book covering Kings, Chieftains and Generals of a Kingdom made of city states and tribes that fought over land and power (just like we see now) who were later deified.
So these collections of texts recorded the emergence of thoughts or thinking processes among the authors across hundreds or thousand of years among the Jewish people and their history. Could be considered as an example of "I think, therefore I am" at the level of collective people?